Armed Career Criminal Act's "residual clause" struck down

Posted by David Hardy · 26 June 2015 10:42 AM

An 8-1 in Jonnson v. U.S.. The ACCA provides for increased prison terms for an offender with three priors for certain offenses. The offenses are listed, with a residual clause, a crime that "otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another." In construing that, the Court had held that you look at the legal definition of the offense, not at the facts of a particular offense, and so it covers flight from an officer and attempted burglary, but not DUI.

At issue here was a past conviction for possession of a short barreled shotgun. The majority rules, per Justice Scalia, that the whole thing is simply too vague to pass muster. The case law required courts to think of the "typical" offense of a given type, and guess how much danger that posed. That requirement was simply too vague to be constitutional.

Once more, why are there explicit grants of police power in the Constitution if Congress can exercise police power over anything it wants? Truth be told. Only the 6 grants of police power are Constitutional. All the other federal criminal statute are unconstitutional because no police power authority was granted. The N&P cannot bring implied police powers into being because the N&P clause is in the same section granted police powers and was created be the same minds. Only someone stretching the entire Constitution to the breaking point can believe that the federal government was endowed with expansive police powers. A common statement in the early years was that the police power was retained by the states. So we have literally hundreds of thousands of citizens punish by an entity without legal authority.

No, the federal government has no Constitutional authority to pass criminal laws about murder, firearms, or anything not explicitly granted in the Constitution. There are no implied powers. The are no inherent powers under the system of government established by the Constitution. Because there are certain specific grants of punishment power ALL OTHER GRANTS HAVE TO BE SPECIFIC AND WRITTEN. The Framers didn't choose to include some and leave others to be implied. Thoughts leading to the paradigm of implied powers would say, "The Framers were smart enough to include the power to punish counterfeiting but they missed the power to enforce commerce and tax laws. But that's OK 'cause the Framers threw in the N&P clause to pick up the slack." Except for the problem that the N&P clause occurs in the same Article and Section as the explicitly granted punishment powers. Explain away the grants and the non-grants.

We have the most ignorant society on Earth. People lack the skills to reason, apply logic, read standard English and understand the interrelationships.